Publisher's Synopsis
"The Masque of the Red Death (The Mask of the Red Death: A Fantasy) is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1842. --- Prospero holds a masquerade ball one night to entertain his guests in seven colored rooms of the abbey. Each of the first six rooms is decorated and illuminated in a specific color: blue, purple, green, orange, white, and violet. The last room is decorated in black and is illuminated by a scarlet light, a deep blood color cast from its stained glass windows. Because of this chilling pairing of colors, very few guests are brave enough to venture into the seventh room. A large ebony clock stands in this room and ominously chimes each hour, upon which everyone stops talking or dancing and the orchestra stops playing. In the midst of their revelry, a mysterious figure disguised as a Red Death victim enters and makes his way through each of the rooms. ----- Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. He is also generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. Poe and his works influenced literature around the world, as well as specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography."
